It was a false alarm.

The screaming, or more accurately shrieking, came from a couple of children that were just playing a game. The supervising parents must have let them wander off, since Cain found the miscreants near the North of the town, close to where the spread of fire had stopped the night before. Dozens of adults arrived soon after and scolded the children for falsely shouting during a time of emergency. With heads bowed, they returned to the school, their absence leaving a hole that Joe’s suddenly filled.

“Those curtain crawlers causing you a spot of trouble there Cain?” Joe asked with a follow-up slap on the back.

“Almost did, yeah. At least it was just a boy cried wolf situation.”

“Boy? Isn’t it supposed to be sheep?”

“Joe. How can a sheep cry for help to people?”

“Well, it can just baa, like a sheep does. But much louder, like an aggressive baa!”

“Some versions have it as a girl who cried wolf, but they were more contemporarily popularized due to certain events. However, I find it fascinating how-” Donovan abruptly cut in.

“Don, Cain doesn’t need to hear about your “fascinating” tales that talk about the difference between a boy or girl. It’s just a cautionary moral story,” Alice said, mimicking air quotations and stopping a tirade of knowledge Cain didn’t know if he cared about or not. It brought a smile to his face to see a couple that complemented each other so well, with one spouse reigning the other in, just like…

Cain was getting annoyed by this. Something had changed in the past 12 hours, since he wasn’t thinking as clearly as he should have been. Always going from one tense and dangerous situation hadn’t helped, but there were plenty of moments of respite that he used for thought and deliberation. It was in one of these moments where he remembered the existence of Brian and Rose at Lookout Pass. He had thought about the place and the events that transpired there, but for some reason the people he rescued there completely escaped his recall.

“Joe, I forgot, I completely forgot, we have to go and get Brian and Rose and bring them back to the town. I don’t know how much longer they can last out there,” Cain said, waving his hand at the general direction the town ended and the forest began.

“Oh shit, I forgot about those two lovebirds too. Well that ain’t good, that really ain’t good. Brian can’t hold a conversation for too long, and I fear Rose might have died from boredom at this point,” Joe said with a smirk.

“This isn’t a time for jokes Joe, we need to send a rescue party and bring them back, the forest isn’t a safe place to be,” Cain berated.

“If you’re looking for help, I can chip in,” Donovan offered.

“And so can I,” Alice added, hooking her arm with Donovan’s. They both looked adamant in their offer to help, and Cain wasn’t going to refuse.

“In that case, I’ll go run and tell Tom what we’re doing, you three start making your way over to the ski resort,” Cain ordered, and was off to find Tom. He was one of the adults that chastised the children for their irresponsible behavior, and so Cain quickly caught up to him and the others slowly making their way back to the church.

“Tom! Hey Tom!” Cain shouted, grabbing the man’s attention. He noticed Cain, and turned around with a questioning look on his face.

“Cain? What’s going on?” Tom asked.

“Last night, Joe and I left a couple in Lookout Pass since they didn’t want to be brought here to Mullan with us. We’ll be going back to get them along with Alice and Donovan. If the mechanics figure it out, could you send a car after us as soon as possible?”

“So that’s where those two were...yeah I’ll send a truck to pick y’all up if they get it fixed. Otherwise, try and make it back before dusk you hear? No sense staying out too long in the woods for nobody,” Tom said in a serious tone, but Cain attributed that to the importance of the situation, rather than the callousness of the man. Cain gave a curt nod and ran back to the others waiting for him, where they began the trek to Lookout Pass.

~~~

Halfway to their destination, Joe and Donovan were engaged in an inane discussion about the benefits of using plastic versus metal for piping systems, and Cain did his best to tune them out. He was experimenting with trying to use force to propel himself forward when moving, instead of another object. With no small amount of embarrassing falls to the asphalt of the interstate, he had roughly gotten the hang of making himself walk faster, even if it was difficult to balance himself when he did so.

A more interesting development was that his Numeral had updated, with the following changes to his Cardinals.

Primary Ordinal

First Cardinal (Force) - 1 (0/1)

Second Cardinal (Resistance) - 1 (0/1)

Secondary Ordinal

First Cardinal (Heat) - 1 (0/1)

It seemed as if the magical book that appeared out of thin air recognized his own realizations about what the Cardinals were, and how they could be used. There wasn’t an updated Cardinal for the healing he did on Alice, but he wasn’t focusing so much on the Cardinal that time as much as he was trying to save another person’s life.

Alice broke his reverie by tapping him on the shoulder and asking, “you alright? You were staring off into the distance for a while there.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Was just thinking about everything that’s happened so far, and now I have to wonder if things will ever go back to normal.”

Alice put on a thoughtful expression and said, “Well what is normal to you?”

“You know, the usual. Wake up, go to work, come home and have a beer, go to bed and do it all over again. I didn’t hate my life or my job, but I had a way of living back home, I had a couple of friends, and I don’t really feel like fighting wildlife for the rest of my life just to stay alive, like out of some B rated wilderness survival show,” Cain ranted for a while, not realizing he felt so strongly about the subject.

“If it’ll make you feel better, your life might not currently be back to your normal, but mine and Donovan’s is. All we need is each other, and you gave that back to us. So lift your chin up high, O’ Savior, and realize that you have already done some good in this new world.”

Cain didn’t figure Alice to be much of a pep talker, and he could hear her barely restrained laugh through the whole thing, but she did have a point. He had already saved one person’s life, and the prospect of saving more allowed him to not focus on his own problems and desire to return to normalcy. He was sure everyone else felt the exact same way, and yet they all managed fine on the surface.

The two of them spent the rest of the walk trading childhood stories with each to pass the time. Alice and Donovan had apparently grown up together and he had a few mementos to throw in there as well. He made sure to emphasize just how strongly he disliked it when some boy with a crush on her tried to make his feelings known…

~~~

The group soon reached Lookout Pass and fell into silence, taking the situation as seriously as they could. They had no idea what to expect from the main building, if Brian and Rose were still alive, or if there would be an ominous trail of blood leading into the forest. There was no such trail leading out of the main entrance, but there was no trace of the two inside of the building.

“Over here!” Donovan yelled. There was an open exit door at the end of one of the hallways, with some strips of bloodied cloth making a path deeper into the woods. Cain hated the woods, but knew he had to go in them anyway. The four of them nodded and began to hike inwards, following the trail up until it stopped with no obvious indication of where the injured person was.

“Over there,” Joe said, pointing a finger at someone crouched under a tree. Cain did not like what he heard.

“save her, LOVE her, --t her crunch, SAVE her, love her, -at her, crack, save her, love her, EAT her, SLURP, sa-” the man said underneath the tree, various sounds coming from in front of him. He paused in his rummaging of the forest floor and perked up, as if it were an animal sensing a nearby predator. Or prey.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Joe, how wonderful of you to join us, we were just talking about you,” the man said, his bare exposed back a mess of jutting bones and flaps of skin. And yet there was no blood.

“Brian? Is that you Brian? What are you doing all the way out here?” Joe asked, taking a tone of voice one might with a violent criminal, doing their best to calm them down and prevent the inevitable outburst.

“Why did you leave us Joe? Why did you do that? What did we do to deserve that?”

“I just went overseas Brian, I never left you,” Joe tried placating, miming to Cain to bring out his wrench and prepare to subdue him. He did, but nobody was willing to take a step closer to the man crouching next to the tree.

“Left us, you left us Joe, you left us, left us, left us, left u-”

The man turned around. Or at least his neck did. He was wearing the face of Brian, but it was all contorted, stretching beyond what skin should stretch like. Tears of blood ran down his face, and his jaw was lined with gore and blood, and it became clear he was eating something. Someone.

“Stay with us Joe. You are here now. Stay. We want you to stay. We...hungerhghgrhrrhg-” The four of them saw the man’s jaw slowly unhinge as he talked, and his body tense, as if it were about to pounce. Cain didn’t give it a chance to rush Joe, and flung his wrench with as much force as he could will into being. The man dodged. Bending his neck with an audible crack, the wrench flew through the space the man’s forehead just occupied. The dislocated head was now staring straight at Cain.

“Run!” Cain shouted, waving his hand and spreading flames in front of him, hopefully discouraging the man, the creature, from following. It leaped onto a nearby tree, and propelled itself off of it towards Cain, hands, claws, outstretched. Cain pushed himself off his feet by blowing force into his knees, buckling to the ground. A claw barely scraped his shoulder and tore through the flesh with no resistance.

The creature growled in annoyance upon landing and whirled around to face Cain, preparing to pounce once again. His current method of dealing with animals by throwing things wouldn’t work, this creature was too fast. What could he do, was there something new he could try? Cain willed his Numeral open and focused on the entry below heat. It was tough, yet bendable, malleable, yet unbreakable, it was solid. And Cain had an idea.

The creature didn’t give Cain more than a few seconds of thought before repeating the same jumping maneuver off the trees. This time Cain didn’t let himself fall to the ground, but jumped up. He recognized the creature’s ability to think, and didn’t predict the same trick would work twice. The creature hissed at its prey escaping its grasp twice in a row, but its open jaw was waiting to snap at Cain as soon as he started falling down. It didn’t notice it was sinking into the ground until it was too late.

The forest floor had already engulfed half of the creature, swallowing it inch by inch as it struggled to escape the very ground it was just walking on. Cain pushed himself away from the creature’s mouth in a tangle of limbs and crashed into the dirt. It was difficult, but he managed to never stop focusing on dragging the creature deeper and deeper, preventing it from escaping and killing them all.

He walked towards the thing, the being that was once Brian, and willed a spike of iron into existence in his hand. It was a crude thing, and took seconds to make. Seconds that he probably wouldn’t have in future fights, but this one was already over. Cain shot the spike forward into the nearly submerged creature’s head and its thrashing finally stopped.

Cain collapsed onto the ground, with a splitting headache, and debilitating pain from his shoulder. In the heat of the moment, his adrenaline filled body was doing everything it could to keep him alive, including focusing on keeping the creature locked in as well as willing, conjuring a spike of metal into existence. The human brain wasn’t designed to multitask like that, and got the complete punishment for it. It was over in seconds, and consciousness slowly returned to Cain, as well as his senses.

“-ain, Cain! Oh thank god you’re alright. I don’t want to think what would have happened if you hadn’t killed that thing, but I also am ashamed to admit that I didn’t offer any help and just sat behind you, cowering in-” Donovan ranted to a wounded Cain, hands pressed over his shoulder. It was soothing, being healed. A little itchy. Alice’s stinkeye saved Cain from any further auditory punishment.

He caught Joe walking from the tree the creature was under, a blanket covered body held in his hands. The entire sheet was dyed red in blood. If Joe had time to find something to cover Rose with, then he must have been out for longer than he thought. Joe gave him a nod, and it conveyed all it needed to: ‘Thank you.’ He kept walking back to the resort, probably intending on carrying her back all the way to Mullan by himself.

Cain sighed in acceptance, and picked himself up off the ground. Donovan was focused talking with Alice about how this was like an incident that happened in high school, and didn’t even notice Joe and Cain walking away. Alice did and dragged Donovan along with her even as he continued to prattle on. There was a running truck waiting outside of the resort, with a man Cain didn’t recognize sitting on top of the engine of the car. The hood was completely exposed, revealing the innards of the vehicle, and Cain figured it was probably the solution the mechanics had come up with. It was a roomy Ford F150 and Cain sat in the passenger seat, falling asleep almost instantly.

~~~

With a start, Cain propped himself up, instantly awake and looking for a possible monster attack. An elderly woman just looked at him with an understanding smile and shushed him back to a resting position, and then left the room. A bedroom. He must have been moved into someone’s house when they returned to Mullan. And the knowledge of why they left and what happened became all Cain could think about.

In just half a day, over the course of a night, Brian had turned into some sort of...creature, with too much bone and skin and claws to even be considered human anymore. Those eyes crying blood, filled with hate, Cain was sure those eyes as he killed Brian would haunt him for the rest of his days. A knock and Tom entered the room Cain was in, motioning for him to stay in bed. Cain gave into his exhaustion and obeyed.

“I already heard from Alice and Donovan what happened, Brian was no longer a person, but some sort of animal? They weren’t too clear on the details but they told me you killed him. Now, I ain’t a sort to uphold the law where the law’s got no place being, and from all accounts he wasn’t rational. You’ll get no trouble from me or the rest of the town. Thank you for saving my people. Again.” Cain nodded, and Tom continued.

“There’ll be a funeral for Rose tomorrow, a quick affair, but we don’t have the time to spare right now. The mechanics figured out a way to get the cars working, something about igniting the gas by hand and making sure some cylinders were rotating. It all went over my head, but we’ll be trying to get everyone to learn how to do it and evacuate the town to a larger city. Somewhere with military or police, since today has proven this forest isn’t safe. Probably Spokane. I felt like I had to let you know what was going on, paying back a debt to our Savior and all.”

Cain groaned at that, recognizing Alice’s influence. With a chuckle Tom got up and left, presumably to take care of a thousand and one little things involved with a town’s evacuation. The update from Tom was enough to clear the fog from his head and Cain followed Tom out the door. He was nearing a new shirt, and his jacket was nowhere to be seen. He rotated his shoulder and it felt perfectly fine, so someone healed him while he was sleeping. Content, his first order of business was to find Joe, and talk with him. The man could not have been alright after that conversation and following fight with the creature.

It was still the afternoon, and the town was bustling with activity, people moving food, water, clothes, mementos into cars as others were being taught how to operate the cars. Cain hoped he wouldn’t have to sit through that obviously complicated explanation of gas and cylinders. Maybe Tom just wasn’t very technically inclined and exaggerated how difficult it would be to do. But Cain had his own ideas of transportation. He asked for and was given a few crackers to eat while searching for Joe, and he found the man inside of the church. The building was almost surprisingly empty considering the world as people knew it had drastically changed, but perhaps they were too busy trying to run away from a town in the middle of dangerous territory. It smelled vaguely like citrus in the room.

Cain sat down next to Joe and stared out the window, waiting for the man to finish his prayer. It must have been a long one, since the sky was turning shades of orange and purple by the time he heard Joe clear his throat.

“Cain, I...I can’t thank you enough for what you did. I don’t know if the three of us together could have put Brian to rest, so thank you for that,” Joe said, in a subdued tone. The man’s energy present since he first met him was nowhere to be seen. Just a sort of sadness present in every spoken word.

“You’re welcome Joe, but I don’t think I should be thanked for killing your friend.”

Joe sighed, staring at the altar with a freshly replaced cloth for a moment before continuing.

“He hasn’t been my friend for a long time, Cain. All I had were good memories of him decades ago, and now I have one final terrible one. I had no idea he felt that way about me going into the military, if it was even him speaking. The world is a cruel place, isn’t it?”

Cain had nothing to say to that. Joe kept speaking.

“I had this small hope that things could go back to the way they were. Seeing the best friend I ever had again, I had this crazy thought that I could introduce my grandkids to him. That he could be part of my life again, we could go back to the way things were, even if dialing it down compared to when we were younger. Not as if we’d find ladies in bars who’d want to cavort with old men like us. Like me.”

Joe slowly became more excited talking about the future he imagined with Brian, but resumed his sullen demeanor once he reminded himself his friend was gone. Cain had no idea how to reassure the man everything was going to be fine. Hell, he had barely known him for a day and even though they had been through so much together already, they could still be called strangers.

“You could always introduce me? Tom mentioned evacuating the town to Spokane, which is where your grandkids are,” Cain said, trying to insert a little bit of levity into the conversation.

“You? Ha! They’d eat you alive, just look at that shirt? You know you’re wearing a Vandals shirt? I hope you didn’t choose that yourself, because my grandkids-”

Joe began describing to Cain in detail how informed Jillaine and Timothy were on the topic of football teams, how they could plan elaborate game plans to steal the victory regardless of the player matchup. Cain doubted some kids were theoretical football masters, but he let Joe have his fun. The man was not alright, not by a long shot, but Cain believed that he would get better, bit by bit.